Critical articles give place to memoirs and sketches, fiction or near
fiction creeps in. There is always a tendency to lose type and be
absorbed into the form that the mid-century had made so successful: a
periodical, handsomely illustrated, with much fiction, some
description, a little serious comment on affairs written for the
general reader, occasional poetry, and enough humor to guarantee
diversion. This is our national medium for literary expression--an
admirable medium for a nation of long-distance commuters. And it is
this "family magazine" I wish to discuss in its literary aspects.
The dominance of the family magazine as a purveyor of general
literature in America has continued, but in our own time the
species (like other strong organisms) has divided into two genres,
which are more different than, on the surface, they appear. The
illustrated _literary magazine_ (the family magazine _par
excellence_) must now be differentiated from the illustrated
_journalistic_ magazine, but both are as American in origin
as the review and the critical weekly are English.
It was the native vigor of the family magazine that led to the
Great Divergence of the 'nineties, which older readers will
remember well.
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